My wife and I seemed to have lucked out when we got married. Since we were members of the church, we got the ceremony, the minister, basement for reception, and workers that cooked and served the food for free. We had a wedding for around 250 people and I think the total thing cost us maybe $2,500. Of course our family and us did a lot of the work making stuff for the wedding and it really cut the costs. And since both my wife and I were 20 at the time and we had the reception at a church, we had no drinking, so that solved that problem.